Leaving nothing to chance with SAS® Analytics

Asia's 'leading family resort' - GMB - knows exactly what guests want

Can an integrated gaming and entertainment resort predict what its customers want? And can it wager its last dollar confident that it's placing it on the most winning mix of strategies? Genting Malaysia Berhad (GMB), the company that runs Asia's leading family resort, bets it can.

Using SAS® in a marketing campaign aimed at return visitors, GMB achieved response rates of 24 percent from the test group versus 21 percent in the mailing control group. The same campaign, conducted six months before, resulted in response rates of 18 percent in the test group versus 11 percent in the mailing control group.

Our customer satisfaction has definitely increased as seen from the results of various campaigns.

Kevin Sim
Executive Vice President, Resort Operations

Making the right decisions

"Armed with richer customer insight and targeted customer segments, we can be more selective in our investment," explains Kevin Sim, Executive Vice President of Resort Operations. "We can accurately determine how much time, effort, and resources we need to put into each segment that will deliver the highest outcome in terms of increasing profit, lowering cost and reducing the time and effort needed to make the right decision. Our customer satisfaction has definitely increased as seen from the results of various campaigns."

In addition to improvements in marketing campaign response rates, GMB has achieved significant time-savings by automating the production of 13 key reports from six sections of the company. Those reports once consumed 166.5 man hours each month. With SAS, GMB produces the same reports in less than 16 hours.

The business at GMB

Resorts World Genting offers six hotels with 10,000 rooms, over 50 fun rides, 170 dining and shopping outlets, mega shows, business convention facilities and endless entertainment – all at one location.

Resorts World Genting was voted the World's Leading Casino Resort (2005, 2007 to 2010), Asia's Leading Casino Resort from 2005 to 2010 and Asia's Leading Family Resort from 2008 to 2010 by World Travel Awards.

The business intelligence initiative

Resorts World Genting launched Genting WorldCard over 10 years ago, a loyalty network program that provides more than 3 million members with exclusive offers and promotions not only in the Genting group of companies, but also in more than 2,000 participating merchant outlets throughout Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong.

During that time, GMB launched an initiative to gather information about its customers to better understand them and build a stronger customer loyalty base. SAS was selected to improve customer insights and further optimize GMB marketing campaigns.

A winning strategy

In recent years, GMB has integrated vast amounts of demographic, transactional and behavioral data from multiple sources and established a single output. Using advanced analytics from SAS, GMB has gained better insights about their customer segments to launch more effective marketing campaigns and improve customer services.

"We will not stop the integration," Sim says. "Instead, we will continue to collect more data from different divisions in the company. Information derived from data is addictive – you just can't get enough. With better data visibility, we are able to improve certain areas in our services, which weren't possible before SAS."

Through SAS Analytics, GMB's data is transformed into proprietary customer intelligence that is made available to implement strategic marketing campaigns. With SAS, GMB gains a 360-degree view of customers who frequent business venues like casinos, restaurants, hotels and theme parks. GMB uses predictive analytics to understand customers' past behaviors through customer profiling and segmentation and to predict their future preferences and spending patterns.

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.